Highlights-
The Senate would add $360 million to the budget request for R&D in the
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 2009, for a total of $2.3 billion, 1.7
percent less than 2008 (see Table). The Senate would
add back some earmarks that USDA proposes to eliminate, but would also boost formula
funding. The Senate total is also bolstered by $72 million in new mandatory research
funding enacted in June as part of the 2008 farm bill.
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On the extramural side, funding for the National Research Initiative (NRI),
renamed the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) by the new farm bill,
would increase slightly to $200 million, though this would be $57 million less
than the request. Hatch Act funding would increase from $196 million to $206
million. USDA intramural research would stay even at $1.2 billion in the Senate
plan.
USDA R&D in FY 2009 Senate Appropriations
On July 21, the Senate Appropriations
Committee approved its version of the FY 2009 Agriculture appropriations bill
(S 3258) providing funding for most of the U.S. Department and Agriculture (USDA)
and miscellaneous agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for
possible consideration by the full Senate in September. The Senate would spend
$2 billion more on the bill’s programs in 2009 than the President’s request for
a total of $33 billion in discretionary funding.
In
February, just as in past budget requests, USDA once again proposed to reduce
its R&D budget through the proposed elimination of congressional earmarks.
Congress inserted hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D funding for congressionally
designated, performer specific R&D projects in 2008 which USDA proposed to
cancel in 2009 for a total USDA FY 2009 R&D request of $2.0 billion, a $399
million cut (see Table; for details of USDA’s FY
2009 request, see the March 20 AAAS R&D Funding Update
or Chapter 10 of AAAS Report
XXXIII: R&D FY 2009.)
But
thanks to Senate earmarks and $72 million in new mandatory funding created in
the June 2008 farm bill over the President’s veto, the Senate would add $360 million
to the USDA request for R&D to bring the 2009 total to $2.3 billion, $39 million
or 1.7 percent short of the current 2008 total (see Table).
The
Senate would keep funding for USDA extramural research growing once new mandatory
funds are included. USDA’s extramural research grants, nearly entirely to
colleges and universities, are administered by the Cooperative State Research,
Education and Extension Service (CSREES). Total CSREES R&D would fall $44
million or 6.7 percent in the Senate plan to $618 million (see Table), but Senate
appropriators note that CSREES will administer $72 million in new mandatory research
funds to bring total USDA extramural agricultural research above the 2008 level.
Senate appropriators would not provide the full requested increase to the National
Research Initiative, USDA’s main competitive research grants program, renamed
the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) by the recent farm bill (Public
Law 110-246). AFRI funding would total $200 million in the Senate plan, $9 million
more than 2008 but $57 million short of the request. The Senate would keep other
competitive research funding within Integrated Grants at $26 million, the same
as 2008.
The
Hatch Act, the largest funding source for formula-distributed research funds to
the nation’s land-grant universities, fell from $323 million in 2007 down to $196
million in 2008, but would rebound to $206 million in 2009 in the Senate plan.
Senate appropriators do not comment on USDA’s proposal to expand the portion of
Hatch Act funding going to multi-state projects from 25 percent to 70 percent
and to make all these grants competitively awarded, meaning that most of the 2009
Hatch Act funding could go to competitive multi-state research projects, leaving
just a fraction for traditional formula research funds instead of the roughly
$180 million a year for most of this decade. USDA proposes a similar move for
the Cooperative Forestry program ($19 million), converting two-thirds of total
funding from formula funding to competitive multi-state grants; Senate appropriators
are also silent on this proposal.
The
Senate would add back funding for earmarked Special Research Grants (SRG) in 2009
instead of the USDA proposal to eliminate them. After zero funding in 2007, SRG
funding climbs to $92 million in 2008 but would drop to $51 million in 2009, although
this would include just the Senate earmarks; after the House adds its own earmarks,
the total will climb. The Senate would also fund two dozen earmarked research
projects in other parts of the CSREES budget.
In
June, Congress finally enacted a five-year farm bill, the Food, Conservation,
and Energy Act of 2008 (Public Law 110-246) to reauthorize farm and nutrition
programs from 2008 through 2012. The previous farm bill expired last October,
and the new farm bill became law in June only after Congress overrode President
Bush’s veto. Although mainly concerned with commodity, nutrition, and conservation
programs, the new law does contain several research provisions, including a reorganization
of CSREES over the next several months and the restructuring and renaming of several
extramural programs such as the AFRI.
The
law also creates several new mandatory agricultural research programs, meaning
funding is provided automatically each year instead of being subject to annual
appropriations like the rest of the USDA R&D portfolio. The law actually provides
$88 million in research funding for 2009, but the Senate appropriation would take
back some of the mandatory funding to retain $16 million for organics research,
$36 million for specialty crops research (fruits and vegetables), and $20 million
for bioenergy research, for a total of $72 million in research money taken out
of the Commodity Credit Corporation’s (CCC) mandatory funding pool and given to
CSREES to administer. CSREES will distribute these funds mostly to extramural
institutions through a competitive process. Specialty crops research gets a head
start with $30 million in research funding for 2008 that is already available.
Most
of USDA’s intramural research is performed in the Agricultural Research Service
(ARS). ARS R&D would stay just about
even with 2008 at $1.2 billion in the Senate plan for 2009 (down 0.2 percent),
instead of a 15.6 percent requested cut from USDA’s proposal not to continue 2008
earmarks. Intramural research in ARS
Salaries and Expenses would increase slightly from 2008 to 2009 by $13 million
or 1.2 percent to $1.1 billion. Although the Senate bill does not contain any
specific earmarks for 2009, the report accompanying the bill instructs ARS to
keep funding stable for all 2008 research projects, implying that all 2008 earmarks
would be carried over into 2009. ARS Buildings and Facilities funding would fall from $47
million to $31 million because there would be fewer earmarks.
The
other major USDA R&D agency is the Forest Service, which is funded in the
Interior appropriations bill. Because the Senate has not drafted the Interior
bill yet, it is unclear how Forest Service R&D will fare in the Senate.
The FY 2009 Senate USDA R&D portfolio
could stabilize funding in real terms (see Figure 1). Since hitting a low
in FY 1996, the funding trend had been generally upward, first because the federal
budget surplus made more discretionary funds available to congressional appropriators,
then in FY 2000 and FY 2001 from the release of mandatory competitive research
funds, and since FY 2002 because heightened concern about agricultural terrorism
and the security of USDA laboratories resulted in millions for security upgrades
and other homeland security-related investments. Those needs have waned, and thus
funding has fallen. There had been a steady increase in congressionally earmarked
projects, but the lack of earmarks brought 2007 R&D funding down dramatically.
2008 congressional appropriations brought back earmarks, and the 2009 Senate appropriation
so far has fewer earmarks than in 2008, meaning that non-earmarked USDA R&D
funding could be stable to increasing in real terms in 2009 if the Senate plan
prevails.
Figure
1. (click
on the image for PDF)
Outlook
and Next Steps
The
full Senate could debate and approve Agriculture bill in September after the August
congressional recess, but it is increasingly likely not to debate it at all before
the November elections. There is now almost no chance that Congress
will send a final version of the bill to President Bush before the October 1 start
of FY 2009. The President has threatened to veto any 2009 appropriations bill
that exceeds his request; since the Senate version of the bill does so and since
Congress is not inclined to do the heavy lifting of negotiating a House-Senate
compromise bill only to see it vetoed, the bill has a long way to go before its
funding levels become final. Only the new mandatory funding programs from the
2008 farm bill will have secure 2009 funding when FY 2009 starts.
(This
analysis is one of a series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates on FY 2009 congressional
appropriations. The complete series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including
continually updated analyses of R&D in FY 2009 appropriations, is available
on the AAAS R&D web site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd)
in the "FY 2009 R&D" or the "What's
New" sections.)
- August 1, 2008
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy
Program
1200 New York Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607
AAAS
R&D Web site: http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd
